2. Benjamin and Hannah Weaver of Warwickshire

The Weaver name comes from the River Weaver in Cheshire: distribution of the name across England remains biased to the west. Apparently, a Norman - Baron de Wavre was given land there by Edward the Confessor. He probably took the name from the area around the River (which weaves around), or just possibly brought it with him from Flanders. There is a gap in the records but they were still there in 1271, and as lords of the manor until at least the C15. Later generations show up in the West Midlands and Wales.

A Clement Weaver was born in Glastonbury in 1620, and is the immigrant ancestor of thousands of Weaver descendants in the United States, including the actress Sigourney Weaver. An exhaustive study about this family, History and Genealogy of a Branch of the Weaver Family (Lucius Weaver, 1928) claims descent from Great King Cunedda of Wales (c 400), progenitor of the royal dynasty of Gwynedd! Traditionally Cunedda was a Romano-Briton from Clackmannanshire, Scotland (!) who based himself in Chester after the Romans left Britain. The next 23 generations of the family - to Cadwgan ap Bleddyn of Powys (1075) - are shown in a tree in Wikipedia - which even shows how the family is related to the Tudor Kings of England. However, Powys was now under Marcher Lord control, and the descendants of the chiefs had little real power.

Weaverham church (my photo)

Six generations on, at the end of the C13, Ieuan ap Madoc married a daughter of the Cheshire Weaver family (probably by then in Shropshire), and named his son Humphrey Weaver, rather than using the traditional Welsh patronymic. This seems to mark a shift away from a Welsh identity at about the time the nation was subdued. We have known for a long time that one centre of the family was at Weaverham but I've recently had access to the 1928 book, which details a second centre of the family, along the River at a place actually called Wever (or Weever or Weaver). The family held the timber-framed mansion Weever Hall until the C15, when the heiress of Thomas de Weever married into the Stanley family of Battle of Bosworth fame. The area suffered from subsidence and flooding due to salt mining, and is now part of Darnhall, just to the south west of Winsford.

Weever Hall (old engraving)

Anyway, there followed several generations in Herefordshire, establishing a separate branch from those who had remained in Cheshire, and those who had moved into Wales. The whole of this area from Chester to the Somerset Levels was 'the debatable lands' between Wales and England for all of these hundreds of years.

It is likely that Benjamin's father was born in Bickenhill nr Solihull, Warwickshire, but the family seems to have been in Worcestershire before that, which would suggest that we share the Americans' Herefordshire line. For some years, I agreed with other researchers that Benjamin's wife Hannah was a Nicklin from the Worcestershire/Staffordshire border - but I now think this is a different couple. Rather than them being in more than one place at one time, we now have the opposite problem with gaps in the census records in 1851 and 1861.

Sutton Coldfield church (my photo)

Benjamin's mother was Martha Barlow, who was born in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire. Sutton Coldfield had been associated with the manufacture of blades and tools, but by this time it was an early commuter town for Birmingham. This was encouraged by the arrival of the railway in 1837 - before long tens of thousands of Birmingham residents were travelling to Sutton Park on excursions. My photos of the town are here. As late as the 1950s, it was described as a magical place for a Brummie - as good as the seaside.

Martha's parents, John Barlow and Mary Basby, were born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and Knowle nr Solihull, Warwickshire, respectively, and they married in Knowle. Stoke is, of course, renowned for its pottery industry. Knowle is well-known to the family; the Birmingham & Warwick Junction Canal through the village opened in 1844.

For the record, and with the usual cautions, my oldest direct ancestors we know about in this part of the family are: Samuell Weaver (1716), Henry Matthews (1696), John Barlow (1708), and Anthony Basby (1707).

Benjamin was an agricultural labourer in 1841. He had five siblings and eleven children, all born in Sutton Coldfield. Most of the children were born in Walmley Ash, to the south of the town, which might suggest that Benjamin worked on land belonging to one of the big halls in the area. 

Walmley church (credit)

This was the period of 'high farming' when farmers and landowners were encouraged to drain their land, rotate their crops, use fertiliser and mechanise. The third quarter of the C19 was the golden age of the British agricultural machinery industry, and its ploughs, mills, threshing machines, and the introduction of steam power.

Despite his large family, he shows up in the Aston Union Workhouse (listing) in 1871 and 1881, when he died, at age 91. Hannah had died in 1853 at Blabbs.

Former Aston Union Workhouse (credit)

There is a particular mystery about one of his children, Rebecca. She was born in about 1826 but, by the first census in 1841, she is already showing up as a servant on the edge of the town. Her baptism is not recorded. She names Benjamin as her father on her marriage certificate, and her descendants have a DNA link to him. Yet more strangely, Benjamin calls his last child, born in 1840, Rebekah.

The children were:

• 33.2.1 - Thomas Weaver (1813)
• 33.2.2 - Benjamin Weaver (1815)
• 33.2.3 - Mary Weaver (1817)
• 33.2.4 - John Weaver (1819)
• 33.2.5 - Samuel Weaver (1822)
• 33.2.6 - Daniel Weaver (1826)
• 33.2.7 - Rebecca Weaver (1829)
• 33.2.8 - Emmanuel Weaver (1831)
• 33.2.9 - Joseph Weaver (1836)
• 33.2.10 - Rebekah Weaver (1840)

Chapter 33 has more on these individuals.

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